NPR Staff

The writer Lydia Davis has released a new collection of short stories — and, in her trademark style, some of them are really short stories. Here's "Contingency (vs. Necessity)" in its entirety:

He could be our dog. But he is not our dog. So he barks at us.

...

People are having a harder time moving toward the places with the most economic opportunity. High cost of living is driving them to cheaper places, where job options are more limited.

To the shock and awe of viewers, main characters were killed off on ABC's Scandal and CBS' The Good Wife in recent weeks. Author K.M. Weiland offers advice on successfully killing a character.

The sound of the island nation underwent dramatic changes in the 1960s and '70s, taking on aspects of psychedelia and jazz fusion. A trove of lost music from that era is now available.

There's a gold rush going on, but it has nothing to do with metal. Ozy.com co-founder Carlos Watson says the yellow Indian spice, with its healing properties, is seeing growing popularity in the U.S.

Before Ken Jeong played Señor Chang in Community and the infamous Mr. Chow in The Hangover, he was known by his patients as Dr. Jeong.

Paul Rusesabagina is a figure from history — a terrible history.

He was the manager of the Diplomat Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda, 20 years ago, when the genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi people began. More than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus would be killed in just three months.

While most of ...

In the new play, Camp David, President Jimmy Carter muses, "Put an Arab and a Jew on a mountaintop in Maryland and ask them to make peace. What was I thinking?"

36 years ago, Carter did get Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin together ...

Writing a biography of John Updike is a tricky thing: The acclaimed American writer of elegant essays and elegiac novels and short stories may have been a genius, but he was also disconcertingly normal. He liked to drink, but wasn't a drunk; he had three marriages, but wasn't a womanizer; ...

When violinist Yevgeny Kutik's family left Minsk for the U.S. in 1990, they were stripped of most of their belongings. He was stunned at what his mother, a music teacher, fought to keep.

Aidan Seeger was 7 when he died of a genetic disorder known as ALD in 2012. Now New York state requires newborn screening for the disorder, thanks to "Aidan's Law."

Arguments over money and big-time college athletics are more fiery than usual these days. We asked Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami, and our readers if athletes should be paid.

Huge crowds packed arenas to watch the world's best pedestrians walk in circles for six days at a time. And trainers encouraged the athletes to drink champagne — at the time considered a stimulant.

You got in! But just how much money is that school offering you? Financial aid award letters can be confusing, so we've put together a sample letter — and translated it into plain English.

Author Emma Donoghue's new novel, Frog Music, imagines a new solution to the 1876 murder of a San Francisco frog-catcher — and fits in a lot of raw and raunchy popular songs along the way.

The Viennese writer was once one of the world's most translated authors, but after his death he was forgotten — until now. Wes Anderson credits Zweig's writing at the end of his latest film.

Tell Me More kicks off its annual ode to poetry month with the Muses and Metaphor series.

Throughout April we'll feature Twitter poems submitted by NPR fans and hear from poets and writers from all over the country.

But to shake things up, regular contributors to Tell Me More's Beauty ...

Last-minute health insurance shoppers turned up in record numbers Monday, both online and in person at clinics, county health departments and libraries. They were there to sign up for Obamacare on the last official day of open enrollment.

Public radio reporters checked out the scene in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Houston ...

"There's a lot of embroidery in this book ... " Midler says. "It's all lies, except for like 10 percent." A new edition of A View From a Broad, originally published in 1980, is out this week.

Latvia joined NATO and the European Union a decade ago. Its former president sees these strong ties to the West as vital to maintaining its security and independence.